The Cheap Eater: Taco in a Bag

Kevin PangTribune reporter

Mall food, reluctantly: Taco in a Bag in West Dundee

Scene: Monday afternoon, Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee. A girl at a kiosk sells smartphone cases to no one in particular. A man sells plush dolls at a free-standing cart to no one in particular. Two teens walk out of Spencer Gifts, giggling. The food court sits empty, save a half dozen people, spooning plate-to-mouth from the likes of Tokyo Grill, Baskin-Robbins, Manchu Wok, et al.

Within this cookie-cutter sameness is a stall called Taco in a Bag, adorned with superhero graphics. It looks loud and out of place, like the kid who wears a Sex Pistols shirt to Sunday school. There we find Patrick Bertoletti, the stall's co-owner and the man who conceives the food, sitting alone, wallowing in the tedium of an American mall on a Monday afternoon.

Bertoletti looks around at his business competitors. "It's just depressing to see people go to Sbarro's. People actually think that's real Italian."

The tone in his voice rings more exasperation than resentful. Here he is, braising 20-pound pork shoulders in Cuban citrus marinade and concocting his version of Nutella from scratch. And for whom? In the two hours I spent with Bertoletti, three people placed orders.

"If you told me I'd be working in a mall, even two years ago, I'd tell you you're crazy."

Are you familiar with the curse of the lottery winner? Bertoletti hit the jackpot in March when his restaurant group, Glutton Force Five, won Food Network's "Food Court Wars." The prize was a one-year lease at a shopping mall, rent-free. What he didn't know was the two-hour round-trip commute required to and from Chicago. Or that it would cost him $25,000 to install kitchen equipment. Or his food might be too ambitious for a suburban mall, and that his business would be losing money despite not paying rent. What's going to happen when the landlord comes around eight months from now?

If the name Patrick Bertoletti sounds familiar, you might know him for forcing 21 pounds of grits down his throat or eating 97 White Castle sliders in one sitting. Bertoletti is a champion competitive eater whose name is often uttered alongside Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. Bertoletti grew up in Palos Heights, and his nom de guerre is "Deep Dish" because he once finished an entire Giordano's pizza in six minutes. At Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, the sport's World Series, Bertoletti finished second in 2011 when he downed 53 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

Away from the bright lights of ESPN, Bertoletti, who attended cooking school at Kendall College, leads a mostly anonymous existence in West Dundee. He does get recognized occasionally from his competitive eating days, a label that clings to him like mustard on a white shirt. In the past its novelty got him through the door with prospective employers, but that never translated to any meaningful gigs.

"I want to separate myself from the eating," said the 29-year-old Bertoletti. "People don't take you seriously, they think you're a joke. I want people to see me as cook and a business owner."

So Bertoletti went his own way, and Glutton Force Five took form as a food truck cooking mostly at private catering events. (His co-conspirator in the venture is Tim "Gravy" Brown, also a competitive eater.) Taco in a Bag is the brick-and-mortar version of the truck, where Bertoletti gets to flex his creative muscles. His food is based on the Walking Taco or Frito Pie concept — think nacho-in-a-bag for simultaneous walking and eating.

Bertoletti has no illusions his food will compete for James Beard awards. Look at it as high-minded Dude Food, the type of concoction a chef will improvise at 3 a.m. after a night of moderate drinking. The formula is consistent across the 6-item menu (all $6.95): A foil bag, a base of chips fried from El Milagro tortillas, meat, sauce, toppings. Bertoletti's food is unapologetically rich; chorizo country gravy is the basis of The Big Jim, merged into a creamy mess of tomatillo sour cream, pepper jack cheese and scallions. His cooking philosophy: "I want every bite to be an explosion." This coming from a competitive eater.

The Cuban contains all the components of the namesake sandwich, minus the bread: an orange juice-tinged, sopping wet mesh of shredded pork, topped with pickles, Swiss cheese and Dijon mayonnaise. The Norberto is another no-holds-barred kapow of carbs plus proteins: spicy shredded chicken thighs, sauteed onions and bell peppers, with a guacamole sauce studded with dried cranberries. If you took a cocktail reception appetizer and shook it up in a bag, you'd get the Sudo Shrimp Taco, with chilled citrus-marinated shrimp, black bean/corn salsa and romaine lettuce scattered over tortilla chips. Doughnut holes ($3.95) make up the dessert menu, served, of course, in a bag. Bertoletti apologized for the doughnut holes being "a bit denser than I'd like today," but still they were crisp and compensated with thick lava flows of sauce — both the Nutella and banana pudding versions won me over.

So why isn't this concept taking hold? It's from-scratch cooking and the execution is sound.

It will come as no surprise to restaurant owners, past or present, that running a business requires more than good recipes and intentions. The phrase "location, location, location" is a cliche in food industry circles, but cliches become so because they are based in truth. In this case it may have less to do with suburbia as the shopping center. I applaud those fighting the good fight for better mall food, but let's face it, after I shop for Memphis Grizzlies caps at Lids, or Oakleys at Sunglass Hut, all I need is a pretzel dog and an Orange Julius. There's a certain expectation of what constitutes mall food, and if a Chinese stall isn't inexplicably offering free samples of bourbon chicken, it just doesn't feel right.

Furthermore, gourmet nachos-in-a-bag is by definition portable and better suited as street food cooked from a truck. Or a 200-square-foot hole-in-the-wall near a college campus, open from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m.

(More irony: The team that Taco in a Bag beat is called The Fat Shallot, now a popular sandwich food truck business based in Chicago. Meanwhile, their food court stall at Spring Hill Mall stands empty, a remnant of the show taping.)

Bertoletti isn't losing hope. The holiday season is when shopping malls are busiest, so business should pick up. Even in competitive eating semiretirement, Bertoletti is open to entering the occasional contest if it helps pays the bills and funds the restaurant. Rent will be due beginning in March.

"Cooking is my favorite thing in the world," he tells me. "Even if I have a bad day, I'll come in to cook, and it's just rewarding and calming."

Two stalls down at Sbarro's, a woman walks away with a stuffed pizza the size of a laptop computer.